At NAB 2012 exhibition Dolby showed TV prototype with Dolby 3D technology – result of its joint development project with Philips.

At NAB 2013 exhibition in Las Vegas on April 9, 2013 Dolby Laboratories and Royal Philips Electronics in association with Cameron-Pace Group (CPG) announced its partnership for using Dolby 3D format that includes video content production, encoding, broadcasting or OTT delivering (Vudu) and decoding and playback of glasses-free 3D content on TVs, tablets or smartphones. Dolby 3D technology allows watching 3D without glasses regardless viewer’s location. The technology is based on R&D originally done by Philips and combines an optical layer on the screen and sophisticated signal processing. In addition, it requires extra information beyond the left and right views, primarily a “depth map,” which is needed to generate multiple views.

Dolby 3D components are:

Content tool plug-in

Real-time metadata preprocessor

Dolby 3D format encoder

Dolby 3D format decoder

Real-time depth extraction and enhancement engine

Multiview rendering engine

Dolby 3D can be implemented using several different approaches, including lenticular and parallax-barrier optical layers, and the performance of the optical layer is up to each manufacturer. In order to carry the Dolby 3D logo, the panel must be at least UHD resolution, and transitions between viewing zones must be smooth. With a UHD panel, the effective resolution for each eye is 1080p.